Christmas Stories?

The season of Advent and run up to Christmas is upon us, and soon the images we all know and recognise will be everywhere.  The immaculately turned out Virgin in blue, the clean, smiling animals in the stable, the blonde-haired blue-eyed Christ child peacefully asleep in the wooden, varnished manger.

But let’s be honest  – the nativity as we think of it is not a very accurate description is it?  The first Christmas was chaotic, messy, smelly, and probably quite a hard and unpleasant experience for all who were involved – albeit an experience with a good ending in the birth of a very special child.  Child birth is rarely anything if not messy and to go through such a thing in place built to house cattle is unlikely to aid the general cleanliness of the situation.

In the run up to Christmas last year a number of websites and papers of a vaguely churchy disposition made much of a survey which revealed that for 48% of the population of the UK, the birth of Jesus is completely irrelevant to their celebration of Christmas.

It might be tempting for those of us in the churches to snort disapprovingly and mutter something indignant at this point – but I can't help but wonder if this is largely our fault.

You see, we in the Church aren't very good at helping people to understand why those events of long ago and far away are anything to do with us at all, so small wonder if they get the idea that we are celebrating something rather beautiful but quite unreal – meant for tiny children to present to us wearing tea towels or tinsel but nothing to do with life in the adult world.

The words of our carols can play into this too - whoever heard of a baby who made no crying? or a child that "throughout their wondrous childhood did honour and obey" his parents?  Or, come to that, a stable where all was calm and bright after an unplanned midnight delivery?  Or those serene pictures of the post-natal Mary holding her child – not really like any birth I have witnessed – and I’ve seen a few!  It's all beautiful and clean – and utterly unreal.  Almost mythical.  

But it's the way that we invite people to look at Christmas.  We ask them to leap straight into the middle of the story – without thinking about what came before, or what might come afterwards.  But we've no hope of ever understanding a story if we don't have some idea of its context.

We tell people about the baby and the manger but not about the reason that baby was born.....as an incredible demonstration of God's love for us that was to be presented even more clearly when that baby grew up and hung upon the cross.  

Jesus was born because of the kind of people we are – all of us – when left to our own devices.  We're people who like our own way, people who are inclined to put ourselves or our families before the needs of others and so there are still people homeless, people starving, people struggling with life in a world where others are able to enjoy plenty, comfort, luxury.

God arriving in our world as the baby in Bethlehem shows us another way – the path of self-sacrifice that leads to the cross, but beyond the cross to the new life that Easter celebrates.  Christmas isn't a one off, isolated event but part of the story of God's love affair with the human race that has continued since the dawn of time and will continue until all of us are safely gathered into God's loving presence.

Through the ages, people have recognised this and chosen to live according to God's invitation to love and their lives have shone to transform the dark of the world, reflecting that light which is at the heart of God.

So this Christmas Season I invite you to take your part in the chaotic, messy and wonderful Christmas story – the true story which spans time and stretches into eternity.

You won't need tea towel or tinsel – just come as you are, like all the visitors to that stable, but go home changed, transformed, bearing Christ's light yourself.

Blessings,  

Ali